Cold Spring is a house near

Shepherdstown, West Virginia Shepherdstown is a town in Jefferson County, West Virginia, United States, located in the lower Shenandoah Valley along the Potomac River. Home to Shepherd University, the town's population was 1,531 at the time of the 2020 census. The town wa ...

, childhood home to two

United States Representative The United States House of Representatives is a chamber of the Bicameralism, bicameral United States Congress; it is the lower house, with the U.S. Senate being the upper house. Together, the House and Senate have the authority under Artic ...

s. The house was built by Edward Lucas III and his son, Robert in 1793. Several of Robert and Sarah Rion Lucas' children were notable. Edward Lucas V served as a lieutenant in the

War of 1812 The War of 1812 was fought by the United States and its allies against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, United Kingdom and its allies in North America. It began when the United States United States declaration of war on the Uni ...

, then was elected to the

Virginia House of Delegates The Virginia House of Delegates is one of the two houses of the Virginia General Assembly, the other being the Senate of Virginia. It has 100 members elected for terms of two years; unlike most states, these elections take place during odd-numbe ...

in 1819, 130 and 1831. From 1833 to 1837 he was a US Congressman. Following his political career he was the superintendent of the

Harpers Ferry Armory The Harpers Ferry Armory, more formally known as the United States Armory and Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, was the second federal armory created by the United States government; the first was the Springfield Armory. It was located in Harpers Ferry, ...

. William Lucas became a lawyer. In 1838 he was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, and in 1839 he was elected to Congress. In 1836 he built

Rion Hall Rion Hall is a late Federal style house near Halltown, West Virginia. Built in 1836, it consists of a three-story brick house with a two-story kitchen wing connected by a wood hyphen. The house was used as a headquarters for General Philip H. ...

near

Halltown, West Virginia Halltown is an unincorporated community situated along Flowing Springs Run in Jefferson County, West Virginia West Virginia is a mountainous U.S. state, state in the Southern United States, Southern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atl ...

. A third brother, Robert, inherited Cold Spring, leaving it to his nephew, Daniel Bedinger Lucas in 1880.

Description

The two-story house is built over a raised basement in coursed rough stone masonry. The double-pile center-hall plan is five bays wide. The upstairs hall is wider at the stairs than at the front or downstairs, allowing the hall to take up less of the plan that it would if the hall was as wide as the stairs. The basement kitchen has its own entrance. A stone porch and stairs were added in the nineteenth century.

References

External links

* Georgian architecture in West Virginia Houses completed in 1793 Houses in Jefferson County, West Virginia Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in West Virginia National Register of Historic Places in Jefferson County, West Virginia Family of Robert Lucas (governor) Stone houses in West Virginia Historic American Buildings Survey in West Virginia 1793 establishments in Virginia {{JeffersonCountyWV-NRHP-stub